NBIA Junior Colloquia: Mauricio Bustamante

Speaker: Mauricio Bustamante

Title: Higher, further, faster: high-energy cosmic neutrinos for particle physics and astrophysics

Abstract: High-energy cosmic neutrinos hold vast potential to propel particle physics and astrophysics forward. They have the highest detected neutrino energies---up to tens of thousands of times greater than protons in the Large Hadron Collider---and travel the longest distances---up to billions of light-years, the size of the observable Universe. These unique properties make them piercing probes of particle-physics properties, possibly tiny in size and emerging only at extreme energies, and of the most luminous and distant astrophysical phenomena of the Universe. I will review key discoveries made in the decade since their discovery, the insights gained into particle physics and astrophysics, and the exciting prospects ahead---including new detectors and access to even higher neutrino energies---to tackle long-standing mysteries.